Chapter 194: She Died Five Years Ago

Day broke. The night of terror in the autopsy room had passed, leaving behind only a floor awash in blood and one gruesome corpse after another.

"Everyone inside, get down!"

A stern, familiar female voice rang out. I froze for a moment before obediently clasping my hands behind my head and crouching beside the operating table. "Senior! I'm on your side!"

"Gao Jian?" The team leader was none other than Tie Ningxiang. Three or four detectives filed in behind her, and the scene inside the operating room was too much for even these seasoned veterans to stomach.

"There's only one actual victim. The rest are all human specimens." I pointed at Old Song's corpse on the operating table. With a guilty conscience, I stayed crouched on the floor, not daring to stand up.

Tie Ningxiang ignored me. She called in the forensics team and trace evidence experts, who began working through the hellish autopsy room bit by bit.

They worked steadily from just past five in the morning until eight before the scene was mostly cleared. The police examination revealed that the massive amount of blood belonged to Liu Xuan herself. Despite the gruesome and terrifying scene, there were only two actual fatalities.

Old Song, whose abdomen had been cut open on the operating table, and Old Tao, who had been crushed beneath the anatomical specimens out in the hallway.

At around nine o'clock, the few other survivors from the West Campus and I were escorted to the Municipal Sub-bureau.

Taking my statement this time took a full three hours. To ensure the accuracy of my testimony, Tie Ningxiang even brought out a polygraph and hooked me up to it.

Hooked up to a machine that monitored my heart rate and breathing, I didn't dare lie. All I could do was leave out everything related to the Underworld Live Show and focus my account on Liu Xuan.

By noon, Tie Ningxiang still showed no intention of letting me go. After I finished the station's boxed lunch, exhaustion washed over me like a tidal wave, and I slumped over the table in the interrogation room and fell fast asleep.

"Wake up! Hey!"

Someone shook me awake. Groggy, I opened my eyes and saw the young officer, Zhao Bin.

"You're the first person I've ever seen sleep this soundly in an interrogation room."

"I've already told you everything. Can you let me go now?" I rubbed my sleepy eyes and stretched my numb limbs.

"Letting you go isn't my call. You'll have to ask Captain Tie." He unlocked the handcuffs on my wrists. "Come with me to the hospital. Liu Xuan said she wants to see you."

"See me?"

When we arrived at the hospital and entered the intensive care unit, Tie Ningxiang and another detective were standing guard by the bed. Liu Xuan's injuries were far too severe. The pillar that had kept her going had collapsed, and I couldn't see a single trace of a will to live in her eyes.

"I brought him here for you. Can you tell me the whole story now?" Tie Ningxiang asked Liu Xuan in a low voice, but the dying woman only motioned for me to come closer.

With Tie Ningxiang's approval, I walked over to the bed.

Liu Xuan's lips trembled, but she couldn't get a word out. All she could do was reach out and slowly trace several letters across my palm.

"N-i-v-o-l-u-m-a-b..."

Making out the letters from the faint, icy strokes against my palm, I was taken aback. "Nivolumab?"

I didn't understand why Liu Xuan was telling me this. Just as I was about to ask, she turned her head and coughed up a large mouthful of blood, her condition taking a sudden turn for the worse.

"Get a doctor!"

Emergency resuscitation began. Tie Ningxiang and I were both ushered out of the room, and the group of us sat on the corridor bench in silence.

"What did Liu Xuan just tell you?" It wasn't only Tie Ningxiang; Zhao Bin and the other detective were very curious too.

"It seemed to be her husband's name, but I can't be sure." I gave Tie Ningxiang an apologetic look, then leaned my head back in quiet thought.

Nivolumab was a medication used to treat lung cancer. Why would she tell me that? Was she trying to give me a reminder, wanting me to go look for it? In the sealed-off West Campus, there was only one place where medication like that was kept: Liu Xuan's office, inside her desk drawer.

The resuscitation efforts ended in less than an hour. A doctor walked out, a displeased expression on his face.

"We couldn't save her. The patient had surface trauma covering thirty percent of her body, suffered massive blood loss, and had undergone a kidney transplant. It's a miracle she even survived this long."

"Doctor, she was always in such good health! Please, isn't there anything else you can do?" I stood up from the bench and walked up to him. I wasn't trying to be unreasonable; it was just the most basic respect for life.

"What are you doing? Am I the doctor, or are you?" He waved me off impatiently. "Besides, none of what I just mentioned was even the primary cause of death. The patient developed lung cancer several years ago. I don't know how she managed to cling to life, but the cancer cells had already metastasized extensively. Going by normal progression, she should have died five years ago."

"She's been perfectly healthy for the last five years! Teaching classes, going to work—there was no difference between her and a normal person. Her own students, the ones who spent every day with her, told me that themselves!"

"Watch your attitude. This is a hospital—be careful or I'll..."

The doctor wagged his finger in my face. For some reason, a sudden wave of fury washed over me. I grabbed him by the shoulder and pinned him down at my feet. "Why did someone who should have died five years ago survive until today? She was a doctor too! She spent five years trying to save her husband without ever giving up, while you go in there for less than an hour and come out acting all high and mighty to pronounce her dead! Who the hell do you think you are?!"

"Gao Jian, knock it off!"

Tie Ningxiang and Zhao Bin quickly pulled me away. The doctor, badly spooked, scurried to a safe distance. "Fine, I'll remember you. If you're so tough, don't ever get sick for the rest of your life."

The doctor spat on the floor to clear the dirt from his mouth, then turned and walked away.

I watched the retreating white coat, then turned around and walked into the ICU.

On the hospital bed, Liu Xuan had already stopped breathing. In the end, the parting of life and death took only an hour.

"Gao Jian, what is your relationship with Liu Xuan? Why do I get the feeling you know her very well? And why were you at the Medical College West Campus late at night?" Tie Ningxiang fired her questions at me one after another. No longer monitored by the polygraph, I gave her the answers I had already prepared.

"Captain Tie, the murderer is already dead. How do we proceed with the case?"

Zhao Bin looked at Tie Ningxiang, who waved him off. "Ask Captain Wu. I'm currently suspended. I'm just an ordinary officer right now."

After Zhao Bin and the other detective left, Tie Ningxiang and I stayed at the hospital until late into the night. I carefully looked through Liu Xuan's medical diagnosis records. She had indeed developed lung cancer a long time ago, and the cancer cells had already metastasized five years prior. That doctor was right—by the standards of modern medicine, she should have died five years ago.

"Someone who should have died five years ago didn't die, and even used the time she had left to resurrect someone else. Is this the Heavenly Doctor Destiny?" Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't the real truth. Back when I spoke with Liu Xuan at the school, I had noticed something strange: everything she talked about had happened within the last five years. She hadn't said a single word about the first thirty years of her life.

"Something's not right," I said to Tie Ningxiang. "Senior, I need to ask you a favor. Look into Bai Wang's background. He's Liu Xuan's husband—and the mutilated male corpse on the operating table on the second basement level is him."

Tie Ningxiang and I returned to the police station. After checking through multiple channels, we uncovered something shocking.

Liu Xuan's husband, Bai Wang, had once been a doctor at a Certain Capital Military Hospital. His medical skills were extraordinary, yet at the age of twenty-seven, he suddenly left the military hospital and moved to Jiangcheng with his wife, Liu Xuan.

"They were both doctors?" According to the files, Bai Wang's medical skills were clearly a cut above Liu Xuan's. "Everything changed five years ago. Five years ago, Liu Xuan, who had lung cancer and should have died, survived—while Bai Wang, who had been in good health, was diagnosed with cancer."

I had a faint sense that I had caught hold of a clue. When night fell once more, I walked out of the Municipal Sub-bureau and took a taxi straight to the medical college.

I had a premonition that the truth lay inside the drawer where the Nivolumab was kept.

I vaulted over the campus wall, bypassed the police cordon set up during the day, and slipped into the laboratory building.

Night was setting in, and the dark silhouettes in the classrooms were still standing there. All of the Thread-Pulling Gu had entered Bai Wang's corpse at the very last moment, but I still couldn't be sure the school was completely safe now.

I reached the fourth floor, where the office door was slightly ajar. I went inside and pulled open the desk drawer, but there was nothing in it besides the medicine bottles and some nuts.

"Did I guess wrong?" Unwilling to give up, I pulled the drawer all the way out. Only then did I finally spot it: a thick experiment logbook, sealed in a vacuum bag and taped inside the hollow compartment of the desk.

I tore open the bag. The first thing that caught my eye was a medical diagnosis report.

"Liu Xuan, twenty-seven years old, Stage 3 Lung Cancer."